Wednesday, August 29, 2012

A Party And a Nation Meets Its Vice President Nominee

Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Paul Ryan

In politics the game is to tell people what they want to hear and not at
times the true facts. In a race so polarized as it is, the 2012 presidential
campaign takes things to the next level. With very few undecideds and certainly
a lot of people holding exceptionally strong and unwielding views about
politics it is a process of galvanization of your core supporters.

Tonight Paul Ryan, the Republican vice president nominee did just that. His
speech was simple, accessible and at times eloquent but it also included some
glaring inaccurances. The Democrats will certainly have a lot of ammunition to
throw back at him at their convention and also in the vice presidential debates
in October. The sad thing is a lot of it won’t stick. Paul Ryan stuck to the
core beliefs of many modern die-hard Republican supporters. He hammered the
issues of increased debt, interfering government and the supposed evils of
Obamacare. He took no mercy in showing the failure of the main templates of
Obama’s run for the presidency four years ago of hope and change. To many there
is no point in arguing these issues. The Republicans have painted a rich and
fruitful tapestry for their strong supporters that will overlook what Democrats
will call the deceptions to be found in Paul Ryan’s speech.

There were indeed quite a lot of them. Ryan’s speech started by depicting a
grim economic situation of a failed recovery with one in six Americans in
poverty and the loss of America’s much cherished triple A bond rating. No
matter how much the Democrats have tried to say otherwise, statistics have
shown that the economic rehabilitation is still an issue for intensive care.
Not just for Republicans but for many more in America that is all they see and
pointing fingers as who is to blame is not going to help. Without the person on
the street feeling the recovery in their bones it is a failure and the blame
must fall at the doorstep of the President. Paul Ryan railed against Obama’s
stimulus and has gone all out in depicting virtually all stimuluses as economic
mismanagement. This is when in fact he voted for numerous stimulus programmes dating back to George W Bush’s first term as president.

Paul Ryan spoke often about one of the biggest issues for Republicans, that
of healthcare and especially the Affordable Care Act known colloquily as
Obamacare. While to some the issue of forcing someone to buy healthcare under
penalty of a fine is wrong, how does one attack something which tries, albeit
with substantial flaws to actually give universal healthcare, especially when
Medicare is extremely popular? The Republicans have ingeniously latched on to
the idea that to pay for Obamacare, the president intends to suck out of
Medicare $716 billion. However this is false and was an effective
smokescreen tonight to hide the fact that Paul Ryan’s own plan for healthcare
would gut Medicare as we know it and create a voucher system instead.

One of the more contentious issues will be about Paul Ryan’s statements on
debt and that President Obama walked away from a bipartisan debt deal and thus
endangered the future prosperity of the nation. Ryan has made a name for
himself as a deficit hawk and tonight made the allegation that Obama increased federal
debt by $5 trillion, more than any other president in history. That may be so
but the Democrats will point out that most of it was linked to the previous
presidency and its economic mishandling. Furthermore, Paul Ryan made issue
tonight about looking at the past record of Obama but failed to point out that
his own signature has been on legislation in the past that has increased the
debt even more than Ryan makes out Obama to have done . Furthermore, Obama
was not the one to walk away from the bipartisan deal on debt and that he
advised house Republicans to not support it due to the positive political implications it would have for the president.

Paul Ryan and his children

Surprisingly some of the most divisive social issues of the past few years
barely got a mention. Gay marriage and issues concerning a woman’s body such as
abortion were conspicuous by their absence. Interestingly enough the most
noticable thing in relation to this was a small group of women protestors
waving a banner calling for the Republicans to stay away from their vaginas!
Later Paul Ryan to wide applause harangued Obama and government saying it had
created “a country where everybody is free but us”. This of course hits on the
nail of Republican hypocracy in relation to social issues. For all their advocation
for less interference in people’s lives they are extremely quick to call for a
constitutional amendment making marriage only between a man and woman and for a
ban on abortion. It is for this reason that tonight’s speech was fundamentally
a critique of Obama and his handling of the economy.

One of the more interesting inaccuracies that will be taken up by the press
in the morning will be about Paul Ryan mentioning the supposed lies of Obama
during his presidential campaign in promising upon election to prevent a car
factory from closing. There no legitimate basis for this and in fact Obama
pledged to do his best to secure the viability of the car company, not outright
saving it. But the funniest bit about this lie is that the factory closed
before he was elected president.

For all its inaccuracies the speech ticked the boxes for many Republicans.
Paul Ryan gave them what they wanted to hear in a simple and clear way. To many
that were watching tonight they would have seen a man speaking about the issues
that cared directly to them – healthcare, debt and the failing recovery. The
resonance of that coupled with the sheer joy of the crowd in Tampa will be
etched in to their minds and will it is hoped by Paul Ryan’s speech writers and
campaign crew overcome the erroneous nature of some of its facts. Tonight a
nation saw their vice presidential candidate and have two months for the
Democrats to do their upmost in tearing down the image his speech created among
people